Tanta Est Fallacia Tecti
by nb41
Summary: "I need a labyrinth," he says.


Post-film.

* * *

She's been drawing labyrinths and mazes ever since the flight back from L.A.

On class syllabuses and in the margins of her rough drafts, to say nothing of the three sketchbooks she's filled with them and the complete mess of her worktable at home. (One day a man at the cafe asks her if she's a professional artist, the sort who makes mazes for the books they sell at the newsstand, and she just smiles and feigns not speaking French to make him go away.) She finds she's unable to stop, because the perfect maze is lurking somewhere in the back of her mind, and if she keeps at it she's sure she can tease it out.

School has become the distraction from creating twisting, dead-end paths and impossible routes on countless canvases and pieces of rag paper, though she's careful to make sure her grades don't suffer. The professor watches her like a hawk, eyes keen for signs of whatever dreamsharing might produce in its aftermath. They don't talk about Dom or how he was able to see his children again or the great changes in global energy politics; they talk about architecture, new and old, small and large, and her studies, and leave the rest to lie in the past.

Or, he does. Of course she can't, not with so many mazes to bring to life.

She wants to dreamshare again, but isn't sure how she'd go about that. It's not terribly legal, and she's no street urchin or peddler of illicit wares to know who to talk to or what to even say if she did. She's been thinking of ways to get her foot into that door, looking for scraps of information in newspapers and overheard conversations in clubs and coffee shops, slowly getting bolder.

It's just as well, then, that Arthur shows up on her flat's doorstep one fall evening.

"Have a minute?" he says, like it hasn't been a half a year since they pulled the wool over Browning's eyes and then ran to ground in different directions like a bunch of flushed quail. (She's watched the news; Saito's company is doing well in the wake of Fischer dismantling his father's empire.)

"Sure." She invites him in and starts the kettle to make some coffee. He pauses at her art table, eyes wandering over the haphazard sprawl of contorted tunnels.

Turning one piece to look at it from a different direction, he says, "Hard to put it away, huh?"

She glances over her shoulder and replies, "Yeah," without thinking.

He makes a small sound that might be a laugh. "That's always how it starts," he murmurs, and she thinks, _Isn't is, though_, and wills the kettle to boil faster.

In a few minutes they're sitting on her couch and sipping smooth, Sumatran coffee (black for her, cream and honey for him) from green and gold stoneware mugs and regarding one another with equal amounts of curiosity.

She says the first thing that comes to mind. "Honey is a weird thing to put in your coffee."

He shrugs. "I like how it tastes."

"And it would be the kind of thing that someone would get wrong."

One corner of his mouth quirks. "I'm not quite that paranoid."

"But that's the kind of thing a person does when they're in too long, isn't it?"

"Too long is in the eye of the beholder." He has another drink. "But yeah. It is."

Neither of them need to say who they're talking about. "How's he doing?"

"Pretty well, last I checked in. I have to wonder who Saito knew to pull that off. Maybe someone in the state department?" Arthur shakes his head, then gives her a solemn look. "Which means we all need to be careful."

She raises her eyebrows. He clarifies, "Saito is powerful and rich, and he knows what we did."

"Because _he_ asked us to do it."

"Which won't mean anything to the kind of people he could turn us over to."

"Are you saying you think he'd sell us all out?"

"I'm saying I trust rich and powerful people to do whatever they need or want to, whenever they feel like it."

She studies him. He could pass as rich and powerful with how he dresses and carries himself, but she realizes it's a practical thing for him, and not the truth. If you want to be left alone, you need to be perceived as someone to leave alone. He's cultivating an image for any unwelcome observers.

"Does this mean you want me to tell you if I hear from him?"

He thinks about that. "Me, or Dom."

"How do I get in touch with you?"

He fishes a business card out of his jacket pocket and offers it to her. It's for the pâtisserie just down the street, with an additional number (a mobile, though not a Paris number-Nice, maybe?) scrawled on the back in pencil.

She runs a finger along the edge of the card. It's worn. "This place has good croissants."

"Very good. Also good apple tarts." He sips from his coffee, the essence of casual despite the teasing in his voice.

She rolls her eyes at him and sets the card on her coffee table. "I don't think you came all this way to tell me about Dom or warn me about Saito."

Arthur smiles, his eyes bright, and pulls out a slim, leather bound notebook from an inner jacket pocket. "I need a labyrinth," he says. "A good one."


End file.
